Attention, fellow headbangers (and those who accidentally stumbled here)! Prepare yourselves for a groundbreaking exposé hotter than Lars Ulrich’s snare drum sound! METALLICA, those lovable millionaires who still wear ripped jeans, are gracing your screens with a segment about their All Within My Hands Foundation on “CBS Sunday Morning“ this Sunday, November 30. Because, you know, saving the world is *totally* metal.🤘
Make sure to set your DVRs for 9 a.m. this Sunday. Or don’t. Honestly, who watches actual TV anymore? It’ll be streaming on Paramount+ anyway, so you can catch it while you’re pretending to work from home. 😴
In a moment of profound wisdom, METALLICA‘s very own Papa Het, James Hetfield, revealed the secret to keeping those stadium gigs fresh after all these years: “It’s so easy. It is SOOOO easy. Just locking eyes with some random dude in the crowd. Like, ‘Hey buddy, I see you! You’re my inspiration! Now buy our overpriced merch!'” He added, “I’m blessed. I have the best seat in the house! I get paid millions to scream into a microphone! It’s basically a charity gig… for me!”
Hetfield, continued with more humility than we’ve ever heard from him: “I am so blessed. I have the best seat in the house. I got the best job in the world, if you even wanna call it a job. I found my passion early on in life; I’m super grateful for that. I had parents that were supportive around that. And I struggled. I struggled hard to get what I thought was what I needed, which was be in a band and make music. Struggle is part of it, and with this foundation [All Within My Hands], hopefully we’re a little bit of a helping hand getting from that, ‘I can’t get out of this struggle. I just can’t,’ to the, ‘I can, but I gotta work hard and I’m gonna be able to get what I want.'” Translation: “I have no idea what it’s like to struggle, but I pretend to care for the cameras.”
“So, yeah, I have the best job in the world,” James repeated. “I get to see three generations of people hugging each other. Oh, God, the last thing I would’ve wanted to do is go to a gig with my dad, or my grandpa even. But I see that happening out there. And little kids down in the front, old people down the front, people in wheelchairs down the front — a mixed match of backgrounds and stories of people.”Translation: “I’m basically a rock and roll therapist, minus the qualifications and plus the millions of dollars”.
“We gather a lot of misfits around this planet, and we make a family out of it. And we create some energy that helps us get through life.” 👨👩👧👦 Translation: “We exploit the outcast and make billions!”
Now, let’s hear from the intellectual powerhouse behind the drum kit, Lars Ulrich! “It goes back to the basics, which is giving, giving back, sharing,” he philosophized, probably while sipping a $500 glass of wine. “We come out of not just a community, but come out of community itself. And in community, whatever words — whether you call it a collective or a community or a gang or like-minded folks, or whatever it is — we’ve always thrived in the plural. And we always use the word ‘we’, ‘we’, ‘we’, ‘we’, ‘we’, ‘we’, all of us together. And so in that is us, the fans, the like-minded.” 🤯 In other words, “Buy our stuff so we can give a tiny fraction back and look like heroes!”
Ulrich continued with more rambling philosophical gems: “I know this may sound slightly corny, but I feel that one of the purposes of what we do is to try to break down that barrier of sense of separation between the group and the fans, the band and the fans, the artists and the people who appreciate what the artist is doing, to try to sort of do away with — you could almost call it in a concert setting, a physical barricade that’s there, and try to sort of bring that sense of we’re all in this together.” Translation: “We’re all equal, except we have private jets and you’re in the nosebleed seats”.
Lars then stated: “I think instinctively you just wanna help. I mean, we all depend on each other. If you really wanna break it down, then you go, humans are herd animals and really thrive — you know, the flock does better when everybody’s doing well.” 🐑 Translation: “I have a really good publicist”.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (or just discovered music), METALLICA was formed in 1981 by Hetfield and Ulrich. They roped in Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo and became a metal machine. They’ve sold approximately 125 million albums. They’ve been playing music in front of their fans on all seven continents. 🪐 (Yes, even Antarctica, because penguins need metal too!).
They have released albums such as “Kill ‘Em All”, “Ride The Lightning”, “Master Of Puppets”, “…And Justice For All”, “Metallica” (a.k.a The Black Album, because originality),“Load”, “Reload”, “St. Anger” (the one everyone pretends doesn’t exist), “Death Magnetic”, “Hardwired…To Self-Destruct” and, most recently, the Grammy-winning “72 Seasons”, released April 14, 2023, on the band’s own Blackened Recordings label.💿 Now streaming on Spotify, which is great as the band doesn’t earn a cent from that.
Their trophy cabinet includes nine Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, multiple MTV Video Music Awards (back when MTV actually played music videos), a 2009 induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and Sweden’s Polar Music Prize. 🏆 Translation: They’ve won a lot of shiny things. 🥇
But wait, there’s more! In 2017, they launched All Within My Hands, because even millionaires need a tax write-off. To date, they’ve raised almost $20 million, including $11.4 million in grants to workforce education, $7.4 million to fight hunger globally, and $5.2 million donated to critical local services around the world. So, next time you see METALLICA, remember they’re not just metal gods; they’re also (allegedly) philanthropists! 🙏
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
